Interactions between wind and tidally induced currents in coastal and shelf basins

This paper addresses the impact of atmospheric variability on ocean circulation in tidal and non-tidal basins. The data are generated by an unstructured-grid numerical model resolving the dynamics in the coastal area, as well as in the straits connecting the North Sea and Baltic Sea. The model response to atmospheric forcing in different frequency intervals is quantified. The results demonstrate that the effects of the two mechanical drivers, tides and wind, are not additive, yet non-linear interactions play an important role. There is a tendency for tidally and wind-driven circulations to be coupled, in particular in the coastal areas and straits. High-frequency atmospheric variability tends to amplify the mean circulation and modify the exchange between the North and the Baltic Sea. The ocean response to different frequency ranges in the wind forcing is area-selective depending on specific local dynamics. The work done by wind on the oceanic circulation depends strongly upon whether the regional circulation is tidally or predominantly wind-driven. It has been demonstrated that the atmospheric variability affects the spring-neap variability very strongly.     

On the basic structure of oceanic gravity currents

Results from numerical simulations of idealised, 2.5-dimensional Boussinesq, gravity currents on an inclined plane in a rotating frame are used to determine the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of such currents. The current is initially geostrophically adjusted. The Richardson number is varied between different experiments. The results demonstrate that the gravity current has a two-part structure consisting of: (1) the vein, the thick part that is governed by geostrophic dynamics with an Ekman layer at its bottom, and (2) a thin friction layer at the downslope side of the vein, the thin part of the gravity current. Water from the vein detrains into the friction layer via the bottom Ekman layer. A self consistent picture of the dynamics of a gravity current is obtained and some of the large-scale characteristics of a gravity current can be analytically calculated, for small Reynolds number flow, using linear Ekman layer theory. The evolution of the gravity current is shown to be governed by bottom friction. A minimal model for the vein dynamics, based on the heat equation, is derived and compares very well to the solutions of the 2.5-dimensional Boussinesq simulations. The heat equation is linear for a linear (Rayleigh) friction law and non-linear for a quadratic drag law. I demonstrate that the thickness of a gravity current cannot be modelled by a local parameterisation when bottom friction is relevant. The difference between the vein and the gravity current is of paramount importance as simplified (streamtube) models should model the dynamics of the vein rather than the dynamics of the total gravity current. In basin-wide numerical models of the ocean dynamics the friction layer has to be resolved to correctly represent gravity currents and, thus, the ocean dynamics.     

Dynamics of convective dissolution from a migrating current of carbon dioxide

During geologic storage of carbon dioxide (CO₂), trapping of the buoyant CO₂ after injection is essential in order to minimize the risk of leakage into shallower formations through a fracture or abandoned well. Models for the subsurface behavior of the CO₂ are useful for the design, implementation, and long-term monitoring of injection sites, but traditional reservoir-simulation tools are currently unable to resolve the impact of small-scale trapping processes on fluid flow at the scale of a geologic basin. Here, we study the impact of solubility trapping from convective dissolution on the up-dip migration of a buoyant gravity current in a sloping aquifer. To do so, we conduct high-resolution numerical simulations of the gravity current that forms from a pair of miscible analogue fluids. Our simulations fully resolve the dense, sinking fingers that drive the convective dissolution process. We analyze the dynamics of the dissolution flux along the moving CO₂–brine interface, including its decay as dissolved buoyant fluid accumulates beneath the buoyant current. We show that the dynamics of the dissolution flux and the macroscopic features of the migrating current can be captured with an upscaled sharp-interface model.     

Nonlinear interactions between gravity waves and tides

In this study, we present the nonlinear interactions between gravity waves (GWs) and tides by using the 2D numerical model for the nonlinear propagation of GWs in the compressible atmosphere. During the propagation in the tidal background, GWs become instable in three regions, that is z = 75―85 km, z = 90―110 km and z = 115―130 km. The vertical wavelength firstly varies gradually from the initial 12 km to 27 km. Then the newly generated longer waves are gradually compressed. The longer and shorter waves occur in the regions where GWs propagate in the reverse and the same direction of the hori-zontal mean wind respectively. In addition, GWs can propagate above the main breaking region (90—110 km). During GWs propagation, not only the mean wind is accelerated, but also the amplitude of tide is amplified. Especially, after GWs become instable, this amplified effect to the tidal amplitude is much obvious.     

重力聚点的地球重力学性质与J2项的关系

重力聚点的概念是基于匀质椭球、水准椭球以及参数椭球各自表面重力随纬度的变化曲线在同一个纬度出现相聚的现象于2000年提出,并且当时给出了地球整体密度变化与重力聚点的关系,但是对于三种椭球表面重力曲线为什么在同一纬度相聚的原因、实际地球是否存在重力聚点以及重力聚点的地球动力学性质的阐述等方面都存在不完备性,使得重力聚点这一概念从提出至今仅停留在几何意义或数学性质上.本文将地球动力形状因子J2项作为变量,研究了地球表面重力随J2的变化规律.研究表明:该规律与“重力聚点定理”所述内容一致,从而将重力聚点与J2联系起来.由于J2的增加或减小,会导致地球表面重力在全球范围内以重力聚点(地心纬度φ=±35.264°)为分界线从北极向南极呈现出“负-正-负”或“正-负-正”的变化规律,全球地震的总体分布以及某些大地震的发生可能与此现象有关.     

Interactions between climate change and contaminants

There is now general consensus that climate change is a global threat and a challenge for the 21st century. More and more information is available demonstrating how increased temperature may affect aquatic ecosystems and living resources or how increased water levels may impact coastal zones and their management. Many ecosystems are also affected by human releases of contaminants, for example from land based sources or the atmosphere, which also may cause severe effects. So far these two important stresses on ecosystems have mainly been discussed independently. The present paper is intended to increase awareness among scientists, coastal zone managers and decision makers that climate change will affect contaminant exposure and toxic effects and that both forms of stress will impact aquatic ecosystems and biota. Based on examples from different ecosystems, we discuss risks anticipated from contaminants in a rapidly changing environment and the research required to understand and predict how on-going and future climate change may alter risks from chemical pollution.     

Rapid formation of hyperpycnal sediment gravity currents offshore of a semi-arid California river

Observations of sediment dispersal from the Santa Clara River of southern California during two moderately sized river discharge events suggest that river sediment rapidly formed a negatively buoyant (hyperpycnal) bottom plume along the seabed within hours of peak discharge. An array of acoustic and optical sensors were placed at three stations 1 km from the Santa Clara River mouth in 10-m water depth during January–February 2004. These combined observations suggest that fluid mud concentrations of suspended sediment (>10 g/l) and across-shore gravity currents (∼5 cm/s) were observed in the lower 20–40 cm of the water column 4–6 h after discharge events. Gravity currents were wave dominated, rather than auto-suspending, and appeared to consist of silt-to-clay sized sediment from the river. Sediment mass balances suggest that 25–50% of the discharged river sediment was transported by these hyperpycnal currents. Sediment settling purely by flocs (∼1 mm/s) cannot explain the formation of the observed hyperpycnal plumes, therefore we suggest that some enhanced sediment settling from mixing, convective instabilities, or diverging plumes occurred that would explain the formation of the gravity currents. These combined results provide field evidence that high suspended-sediment concentrations from rivers (>1 g/l) may rapidly form hyperpycnal sediment gravity currents immediately offshore of river mouths, and these pathways can explain a significant portion of the river-margin sediment budget. The fate of this sediment will be strongly influenced by bathymetry, whereas the fate of the remaining sediment will be much more influenced by ocean currents.     

Interactions between diatoms and fine sediment

Excessive mobilization and delivery of fine sediments to water bodies has detrimental impacts on those biotic elements used for waterbody status classification, including macroinvertebrates, fish and macrophytes. The relationship between fine sediment and diatoms is a reciprocal one, with diatoms influencing the production and retention of fine sediments, as well as being impacted by fine sediment derived from the catchment. Diatoms can increase the retention of fine sediments in benthic environments as a result of various mechanisms, including shear stress modification, surface adhesion and bed clogging. Enhanced retention of fines can have important implications for the transfer and fate of sediment‐associated nutrients and contaminants. Excessive fine sediment loadings impact diatom assemblages via shading, burial and scouring. Indirect impacts of increased fine sediment stress can result from changes in habitat availability, herbivory or predator changes, which cascade down the food chain. Indices based on the relative abundance of motile species have been proposed for using diatoms to assess waterbody status. However, disentangling the potential confounding impacts of alternative environmental stressors on these simplistic indices remains a significant challenge. Coupling sediment pressure models, capable of predicting the potential impact of mitigation, with meaningful diatom‐based indices, remains a challenge for catchment planning for sediment abatement and the attainment of improved, or protection of, ecological status. Existing targets for sediment management in river catchments are largely based on relationships between sediment stress and impacts on fish, but these thresholds have been widely criticized. There remains a need to develop generic modelling toolkits coupling sediment stress and impacts on a range of biological quality elements to support a weight‐of‐evidence approach. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Combined effect of rheology and confining boundaries on spreading of gravity currents in porous media

One-dimensional flows of gravity currents within horizontal and inclined porous channels are investigated combining theoretical and experimental analysis to evaluate the joint effects of channel shape and fluid rheology. The parameter $\beta$ governs the shape of the channel cross section, while the fluid rheology is characterised by a power-law model with behaviour index n. Self-similar scalings for current length and height are obtained for horizontal and inclined channels when the current volume increases with time as $t^{\alpha }$.For horizontal channels, the interplay of model parameters $\alpha \text{,}n$, and $\beta$ governs the front speed, height, and aspect ratio of the current (ratio between the average height and the length). The dependency is modulated by two critical values of $\alpha \text{,}{\alpha }_{\beta }=n/(n+1)$ and ${\alpha }_n=(2\beta +1)/\beta$. For all channel shapes, ${\alpha }_{\beta }$ discriminates between currents whose height decreases ($\alpha <{\alpha }_{\beta }$) or increases ($\alpha >{\alpha }_{\beta }$) with time at a particular point. For all power-law fluids, ${\alpha }_n$ discriminates between decelerated currents, with time-decreasing aspect ratio ($\alpha <{\alpha }_n$), and accelerated currents, with time-increasing aspect ratio ($\alpha >{\alpha }_n$). Only currents with time-decreasing height ($\alpha <{\alpha }_{\beta }$) and aspect ratio ($\alpha <{\alpha }_n$) respect model assumptions asymptotically; the former constraint is more restrictive than the latter.For inclined channels, a numerical solution in self-similar form is obtained under the hypothesis that the product of the channel inclination $\theta$ and the slope of the free-surface is much smaller than unity; this produces a negligible error for $\theta >2°$, and is acceptable for $\theta >0.5°$. The action of gravity in inclined channels is modulated by both the behaviour index n and the shape factor $\beta$. For constant flux, the current reaches at long times a steady state condition with a uniform thickness profile. In steep channels and for sufficiently long currents, the free-surface slope becomes entirely negligible with respect to channel inclination, and the constant thickness profile depends only on n.Theoretical results are validated by comparison with experiments (i) in horizontal and inclined channels with triangular or semicircular cross-section, (ii) with different shear-thinning fluids, and (iii) for constant volume and constant flux conditions. The experimental results show good agreement with theoretical predictions in the long-time regime.Our analysis demonstrates that self-similar solutions are able to capture the essential long-term behaviour of gravity currents in porous media, accounting for diverse effects such as non-Newtonian rheology, presence of boundaries, and channel inclination. This provides a relatively simple framework for sensitivity analysis, and a convenient benchmark for numerical studies.     

Nonlinear interaction between acoustic gravity waves

The resonant interaction between three acoustic gravity waves is considered. We improve on the results of previous authors and write the new coupling coefficients in a symmetric form. Particular attention is paid to the low-frequency limit.     

About the relationship between auroral electrojets and ring currents

The relationship between the storm-time ring current and the auroral electrojets is investigated using IMAGE magnetometer data, D_St and H-SYM, and solar wind data. Statistical results as well as the investigation of single events show that the auroral electrojets occur also during nonstorm conditions without storm-time ring current development and even during the storm recovery phase of increasing D_St. A close correlation between electrojet intensity and ring current intensity was not found. Though the eastward electrojet moves equatorward during the storm main phase there is no unequivocal relationship between the movement of the westward electrojet and the ring current development. All these results suggest that the auroral electrojets and the ring current develop more or less independently of each other.     

Interactions between boulders and aeolian ridges on Mars

Here we present new observations of two different interactions between aeolian ridges and boulder fields on Mars that provide insight into past wind conditions. First, an analysis of ridge and boulder interactions at two test sites in Proctor Crater and an additional site ~430 km to the northeast shows that ridge geometry can be affected by changes in surface roughness elements generated by boulder fields. Second, a detailed examination of some of the boulder fields found that individual boulders can generate multi-armed ‘wakes’ that have no clear proxy on Earth. The ridge/boulder dynamics suggest that transverse aeolian ridges acted as roughness during their development, indicating that they formed at a length scale greater than wind ripples. The boulder wakes seem to represent an unusual interaction between flow separation and pre-exiting ridges; why this pattern is not observed on Earth remains uncertain.     

Numerical modeling of lock-exchange gravity/turbidity currents by a high-order upwinding combined compact difference scheme

This study presents two-dimensional direct numerical simulations for sediment-laden current with higher density propagating forward through a lighter ambient water.The incompressible NavierStokes equations including the buoyancy force for the density difference between the light and heavy fluids are solved by a finite difference scheme based on a structured mesh.The concentration transport equations are used to explore such rich transport phenomena as gravity and turbidity currents.Within the framework of an Upwinding Combined Compact finite Difference(UCCD)scheme,rigorous determination of weighting coefficients underlies the modified equation analysis and the minimization of the numerical modified wavenumber.This sixth-order UCCD scheme is implemented in a four-point grid stencil to approximate advection and diffusion terms in the concentration transport equations and the first-order derivative terms in the Navier-Stokes equations,which can greatly enhance convective stability and increase dispersive accuracy at the same time.The initial discontinuous concentration field is smoothed by solving a newly proposed Heaviside function to prevent numerical instabilities and unreasonable concentration values.A two-step projection method is then applied to obtain the velocity field.The numerical algorithm shows a satisfying ability to capture the generation,development,and dissipation of the Kelvin-Helmholz instabilities and turbulent billows at the interface between the current and the ambient fluid.The simulation results also are compared with the data in published literatures and good agreements are found to prove that the present numerical model can well reproduce the propagation,particle deposition,and mixing processes of lock-exchange gravity and turbidity currents.     

Estimation of friction parameters and laws in 1.5D shallow-water gravity currents on the f-plane, by data assimilation

A 1.5-dimensional, 1.5-layer shallow water model and an ensemble Kalman filter are used to evaluate the feasibility of estimating friction parameters and determining friction laws of oceanic gravity currents. The two friction laws implemented are a linear Rayleigh friction and a quadratic drag law. We demonstrate that the assimilation procedure rapidly estimates the total frictional force, whereas the distinction between the two laws is evolving on a slower time scale. We also demonstrate that parameter estimation can, in this way, choose between different parametrisations and help to discriminate between physical laws of nature by estimating the coefficients presented in such parametrisations.     

Comparing gravity and gravity gradient surveys

Noise levels in marine and airborne full tensor gravity gradiometer surveys together with conventional land, marine and airborne gravity surveys are estimated and analysed in gridded form, resulting in relations that detail how these different survey systems can be compared analytically. After defining survey parameters including line spacing, speed and instrument bandwidth, the relations estimate the noise levels that result on either grids of gravity (gz) or gravity gradient (Gzz) as a function of the spatial filtering often applied during geological interpretation. Such comparisons are believed to be a useful preliminary guide for survey selection and planning.     

Correlation between gravity anomalies and the crust-mantle boundary in central Europe

Summary Methods of simple and multiple linear correlation have been used in investigating the mutual statistical dependence of Bouguer anomalies, terrain elevations and the depths of the crust-mantle boundary determined by the method of Deep Seismic Sounding. Numerical results show a considerable degree of correlation among the quantities mentioned in Central Europe.Dedicated to Academician Alois Zátopek on His 65th Birthday     

中国大陆西部重力场变化与强震危险性关系

本文基于中国大陆西部流动重力测量获得的区域重力场变化数据, 尝试对其进行多种位场变换, 在一定空间尺度约束下定义了6种区域重力场变化指标量. 在此基础上, 以中国大陆2002年、 2005年和2008年等3期数据为研究对象, 计算并统计了中国大陆西部M_S≥6.0地震震中位置处震前重力场变化及各种导出参数值, 尝试初步构建以地震预报为目的的地震重力学科指标体系参数. 研究结果表明, 震前区域重力场变化与地震发生位置没有显著的统计关系, 但是重力场变化的垂直梯度和解析信号模量具有一定的地震预报意义, 适合作为地震前兆异常使用.      

Interactions between tides and other frequencies in the Indonesian seas

Interactions of tidal constituents and the transfer of energy from the tidal frequencies to other frequencies are investigated using 3-D tidal simulations for the Indonesian seas, focusing on an area of active internal tides. Semidiurnal tides strongly affect diurnal tides; however, semidiurnal tides are essentially unaffected by diurnal tides. The semidiurnal and diurnal constituents interact with each other through non-linear interference, both destructive and constructive. Semidiurnal tides generate harmonics at nearly the diurnal frequency and higher vertical wavenumbers. In Ombai Strait, these harmonics are out of phase with the diurnal tides and interact destructively with the diurnal tides, effectively negating the diurnal response in some locations. However, this is not a general response, and interactions differ between locations. Energy is also transferred from both semidiurnal and diurnal tides to other frequencies across the spectrum, with more energy originating from semidiurnal tides. These energy transfers are not homogeneous, and the spectral responses differ between the Makassar and Ombai Straits, with the region east of Ombai showing a more active surface response compared to a more intense benthic response in Makassar. In deep water away from topography, velocity spectra generally follow the Garrett–Munk (GM) relation. However, in areas of internal tide generation, spectral density levels exceed GM levels, particularly between 4 and 8 cycles per day (cpd), indicating increased non-linear interactions and energy transfer through resonant interactions. The model indicates strong surface trapping of internal tides, with surface velocity spectra having significantly higher energy between 4 and 8 cpd even 100 km away from the prominent sill generating the internal tides.     

重力和重力梯度数据联合聚焦反演方法

重力数据包含较多的低频信息,重力梯度数据包含较多的高频信息,将重力数据和重力梯度数据进行联合反演得到的结果更加可信.本文基于聚焦反演方法,实现了这一过程.因为联合反演中分量种类增加,所以计算灵敏度矩阵所需要的时间增加,为此,本文提出了一种快速计算灵敏度矩阵的方法.因为联合反演对内存的要求增大,本文选择有限内存BFGS拟牛顿法求解反演问题.本文通过再加权的方法实现深度加权.文中利用单一分量的反演结果来预测异常体的埋深信息,随后将埋深信息结合到深度加权函数中,将其用于多分量组合反演计算.给出了模型试验,发现预测得到的异常体的埋深信息与其实际埋深存在偏差,但是将这一信息应用到反演计算,能够得到与真实模型一致的结果.之后,本文通过模型试验来探究重力和重力梯度联合反演的优势,发现将重力和重力梯度数据联合,能够识别出额外的噪声,反演得到的模型更加合理.但是,对于不同分量组合得到的反演结果是相近的,反演模型的提高很小.最后,将联合反演方法应用到美国路易斯安那州Vinton岩丘的实际数据中,结果显示,将重力和重力梯度数据联合反演,反演模型得到了提高,反演得到的结果与地质资料吻合.